Congress May Overturn FCC's Media Consolidation Plan

Spril writes "A congressional committee voted yesterday to prevent the FCC from allowing even more consolidation of the media industry. The original ruling was covered on Slashdot. The committee attached the pro-consumer proposal to a bill funding the Justice and State departments for 2004. But the Bush administration has threatened to veto the funding because they support ever-larger corporations owning ever-bigger chunks of the spectrum that theoretically belongs to the public. Clear Channel may need to cough up some more money for their lobbyists."

Comments

In the public interest

[Alien Being]

Ralph Nader made some interesting observations about the proposed changes.

Re:In the public interest

[Homology]

There is also foreign concerns about the US ownership concentrations. The highly respectable newspaper Le Monde diplomatique, has the following article United States: an unfree press describing the results of US ownership structure.

Who Owns What

[heli0]

"Media companies continue to grow, and a shrinking number of them shape what we view and read. What does that mean for journalists -- and for the nation?"
Columbia Journalism Review's Web guide to what the major media companies own.

Judging by how tiny the scroll bar becomes when I open the Clear Channel page, I would say they own most of radio while Viacom, NewsCorp and Disney own most of TV.

Re:I've pretty much ...

[MBCook]

If you want to know all about how the New York Times went from being an unbiast paper, the "paper of record", to a liberal cheerleader, I suggest you read the first chapter of a new book called "Off With Their Heads." A facinating read.

More about media consolidation...

[pen]

Media Consolidation, Media Mergers

Changes by the FCC on June 2, 2003, to U.S. media ownership restrictions could result in a series of mergers that may impact television, radio, cable, newspapers and the Internet.

Re:I've pretty much ...

[Homology]

Even the media organizations that you could once count on being neutral and just reporting the facts are lost to us now.

There do exist alternativ sources of informed and critical journalism. For instance, ZNet has many articles written by very good journalists from respected newspapers. Quite a few articles/interviews with Noam Chomksy as well on that site.

You should write your congress person

[PotatoHead]

Wrote mine (Oregon) and found he was against this bill. Maybe the ones against, or at least neutral, might make enough noise to help this one go away.

Quote from pro-FCC House member

[Lelon]

I read about this in the basement of the university radio station I DJ at. We're all watching very closely. Here is a quote from Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who supports the changed media rules.

"We have no intentions of taking up that bill," Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson said. "This has become a political soap opera, and given the chance Chairman Tauzin intends to cancel its run."

I'll admit I'm not an expert on House Committee rules, but this is a serious obstacle for this bill.

What has really peaked my interest is that this bill not only seeks to undo the most recent FCC decision, but seeks to undo the radio deregulation of 1996, which has been great for ClearChannel but a disaster for the music industry. In my opinion it is directly responsible for the lack of quality most people see in today's music industry (and therfore the primary reason for the music industrys economic slump).

Another amendment involving radio passed 12-11 and would expand the FCC's new, stricter radio ownership rules so they apply to stations a company already owns. If enacted, the change could force companies like Clear Channel, the country's largest radio chain with 1,200 stations, to sell stations in markets where they exceed ownership limits.

"This is an attempt to single out one company for being successful and punish them for playing by the rules," said Andy Levin, a Clear Channel vice president. He predicted the measure will be defeated later.

Try to mix and match

[Paladin144]

I try to counteract the omnipresent corporate media (by not watching TV for one thing) by balancing out their spin with that of non-corporate media. I'm not sure if you are aware of Independent Media Center and AlterNet, but if not, you should definitely spend some time surfing their respective sites. Yes, they're on that internet thingy, but I'm pretty sure that paper does not have any special deception-repelling powers.

Independent Media Center is amazing in it that anyone can submit a story. This is much more likely to be read on the local versions; there are dozens of locals Centers, spread around the globe. IndyMedia has proved to be an important organizing tool for progressive groups in third world countries.

AlterNet, on the other hand, is more of a news analysis site, where the headlines of the day are tackled from different angles and where you can find information that the mainstream media "forgot" to report.

The importance of sites like these is that they allow you to see a different side of an issue. In a world controlled by the right-wing corporate media machine, this can be seen as a very good thing©.

Re:I've pretty much ...

[Nic-o-demus]

William Safire, a columnist for the NYT, wrote an insightful editorial concerning congress' actions.
Some quotes:

But to everyone's amazement, the networks' power play was foiled. Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia urged his G.O.P. colleagues to vote their consciences, and an amendment to hold the cap on a huge conglomerate's ownership to 35 percent of the national TV audience was passed by a vote of 40 to 25.

...

According to this week's Pew Research poll about the F.C.C. plan (to break the ownership barrier and permit media crossover), "By roughly 10 to one (70%-6%), those who have heard a lot about the rules change say its impact will be negative." Nearly half of those polled had heard about this issue, despite conflicted media coverage.

This growing grass-roots grumbling against giantism is getting through to legislators ordinarily cowed by network-owned station managers or wowed by big-media campaign contributions. Unfortunately, the any-merger-goes F.C.C. chairman, Michael Powell, has derided objections to his diktat as "garbage," and the White House strategist Karl Rove dismisses the depth of voter resentment that Democrats will be able to exploit next year.

In conclusion, Safire seems to think (and he's usually keen on such things from what I can tell) that this might turn into an election issue. Let's make sure it does.

Eco-cons as well as libertarians may snicker, but Republican Representative Richard Burr of North Carolina observed that 26 independent NBC affiliates had recently exercised their right to refuse to telecast "Maxim's Hot 100." If independents are gobbled up with the F.C.C.'s blessing, more decisions affecting local mores will be made in Rockefeller Center. Is that what George Bush stands for?

...public opinion is on the march. Some in-house pollster should awaken President Bush to a bipartisan sleeper issue that could blindside him next year.

Isn't that the wrong choice...?

[macshune]

From what I can tell the libertarians promote laissez-faire capitalism, which just means "leave regulation up to the markets (lit. "leave it alone" in french, i think)." Since it seems the markets have free reign right now, isn't this what the libertarians want? With the current administration, the market gets to decide how much of something one particular corporation can own in any particular market.

There is no easy solution to this. Personally, I'd just as well have communication companies be public trusts. Pulitzer was supposedly going to do this with his publishing empire before he died, but one of his heirs caught wind of it and made him change his mind.

Re:Isn't that the wrong choice...?

[MadAhab]

Clearly, if you actually think markets have free reign, you aren't familiar with the markets for sugar, oil, milk, natural gas, corn, soy, steel, sorghum, Hummers, etc, etc, etc. These markets are all fixed in some degree or another, either by outright decree, welfare *cough* i mean government subsidies, targeted "regulation" and tariffs, etc, etc.

The funny thing about capitalism is that the most rabid self-proclaimed capitalists practice it so seldom. Hardly any primary source of productivity is untouched by protectionism, subsidies, policy, etc. There are some good reasons for this, and lots of terrible ones. The good ones all run along the lines of "we need this to run a proper country, and we should support it to make sure we aren't dependent on foreign sources". But this doesn't appeal to phony conservatives (real ones understand from time to time, e.g.. George Will's recent article on why the gov't should subsidize Amtrak). The bad ones often amount to giving free rides to your buddies in the oil industry because you are in office and have the integrity of a planarian (flubberworm to those of you who haven't entered high school yet). But dittohead capitalism is entirely predicated on being dangerously ignorant of the real facts: as opposed to actually being against government intervention, which hardly any hardcore "conservatives" actually are - state-controlled "capitalism" is a favorite of fascists hiding in conservative clothing, as long as it benefits them or people who they believe, in their tiny little hearts, they can somehow glom onto.

Misconceptions about FCC ruling

[DavidGuynn]

Let me start my post by saying that I work for ClearChannel... Proud to admit, since I'm one of the youngest full time DJ's in the country, but bad around here since ClearChannel has apparently turned into microsoft...

The FCC ruling was actually considered *a bad thing* within the company because it reduced ownership caps for the radio side of things. What the ruling did was allow cross-ownership of television stations and newspaper outlets in the same market area. In radio, it just changed the method by which caps were enforced; they are now enforced within an arbitron defined market rather than by signal overlap, and it counts noncommercial stations towards the number of competitors in a market.
States.

Straight from an apparently sane congressman

[rhadamanthus]

"Information is to democracy what blood is to the body. I think we're in danger of shutting off the blood flow in our democracy."

-- Rep. DAVID OBEY, D-Wis., sponsor of legislation on Capitol Hill to block a new FCC rule allowing media companies to buy more TV stations.

Found that on Yahoo.

--rhad

Re:I think the real problem

[jdcook]

"Some time ago, over a year, teh exact date escapes me there was a shooting on a university campus. The gunman was later aprehended. This was the extent of most of hte national coverage. They told you it happened, who the shooter was, who was shot, where it happened, and that the guy was caught."

You are referring to the Appalachian Law School shootings. You are also, deliberately or not, misstating what happened.

This case was popularized by the work of pro-gun researcher John Lott. It is an important anecdote in his book The Bias Against Guns. Lott claims that in only 4 of 208 stories on the incident was the fact that the students apprehending the gunman used guns mentioned. Unfortunately, Lott's methodology is screwed up. He counts identical wire service stories appearing in different papers as different stories.

Tim Lambert has done the hard work of debunking this story. For another perspective on the accounts of the incident, see this entry of his blog.

"These weren't off duty cops, just normal students that had guns in their cars."

That's what Lott and the pro-gun movement wants you to think. Unfortunately, it just isn't so. They WERE cops. There are two "student heroes", Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross. (Note: the quotes are not intended to minimize their actions.) Bridges is a deputy at the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department. Gross was director of police corps training at the North Carolina Justice Academy in 1998 and 1999 (before entering law school). During breaks at law school, he works as a cop for the Grifton force. And he put on a bulletproof vest and retrieved handcuffs from his car before slapping them on the tackled suspect who has run out of ammunition.

Check out Lambert's entry on the incident.

Finally, if Lott isn't discredited enough, consider that he also pretends to be a 115 pound woman to bolster his case and attack his critics. Too bizarre to be true? Check out Who is Mary Rosh? and Lambert's information and see for yourself.